This seminar considers the relationship between cultural performance and processes of historicalproduction in the modern and contemporary Transatlantic. What role have street performanceand theater played in anti-colonial/imperial struggles, for example? How do local performancesrecast our understanding of both racial formation and minority cultural practices?

We invite submissions that engage a wide range of topics such as (but not limited to):â€¢ street theatreâ€¢ traveling showsâ€¢ the circus (as imperial spectacle?)â€¢ the reception of performances and how the dominant imperial ideologies (in light of a failingEuropean imperial enterprise?) shape such receptionâ€¢ performance and passingâ€¢ nation and performanceâ€¢ indigeneity and sovereignty

Ideally the seminar will push us to consider how we frame these discussions and how terms likeâ€œthe global,â€ â€œdiaspora,â€ â€œtransatlantic,â€œ â€œmemory,â€ â€œcircumatlantic,â€ â€œhistoryâ€ shape, enable, orhinder our conversations. In this sense we are interested in papers on specific performancehistories, literary and cultural productions, as well as on larger critical conversations around howwe currently approach questions of racial formation in and across the Atlantic.